I'd say that awk really is too weak. Awk has a grand total of 2 data types: strings, and associative arrays mapping strings to strings. There is no support for arbitrarily nested data structures. You can simulate them with arrays if you really want to, or you could shell out to jq, but it's definitely swimming upstream.
Most languages aren't quite that bad. Even if they can't handle JSON very ergonomically, almost every language has at least some concept of nesting objects inside other objects.
What about shell? Just like awk, bash and zsh have a limited number of data types (the same two as awk plus non-associative arrays). So arguably it has the same problem. On the other hand, as you say, in shell it's perfectly idiomatic to use external tools, and jq is one such tool, available on an increasing number of systems. So you may as well store JSON data in your string variables and use jq to access it as needed. Probably won't be any slower than the calls to sed or awk or cut that fill out most shell scripts.
Now, personally, I've gotten into the habit of writing shell scripts with minimal use of external tools. If you stick to shell builtins, your script will run much faster. And both bash and zsh have a pretty decent suite of string manipulation tools, including some regex support, so you often don't actually need sed or awk or cut. However, this also rules out jq, and neither shell has any remotely comparable builtin.
But you might reasonably object that if I care about speed, I would be better off using a real programming language!
Most languages aren't quite that bad. Even if they can't handle JSON very ergonomically, almost every language has at least some concept of nesting objects inside other objects.
What about shell? Just like awk, bash and zsh have a limited number of data types (the same two as awk plus non-associative arrays). So arguably it has the same problem. On the other hand, as you say, in shell it's perfectly idiomatic to use external tools, and jq is one such tool, available on an increasing number of systems. So you may as well store JSON data in your string variables and use jq to access it as needed. Probably won't be any slower than the calls to sed or awk or cut that fill out most shell scripts.
Now, personally, I've gotten into the habit of writing shell scripts with minimal use of external tools. If you stick to shell builtins, your script will run much faster. And both bash and zsh have a pretty decent suite of string manipulation tools, including some regex support, so you often don't actually need sed or awk or cut. However, this also rules out jq, and neither shell has any remotely comparable builtin.
But you might reasonably object that if I care about speed, I would be better off using a real programming language!